President and CEO of Hyundai Motor Jose Munoz said Wednesday that the White House has called and apologized to him for a raid and detainment of hundreds of his workers in Georgia. File Photo by Peter Foley/UPI | License Photo
Hyundai Motor CEO Jose Munoz said Wednesday that the White House has called and apologized for September’s immigration raid of an electric battery plant in Georgia, framing it as an “accident.”
Munoz commented on the raid while on stage during the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore.
“I got a phone call from the White House apologizing for what happened,” he said.
Some 300 South Korean workers at a battery-cell manufacturing facility that is a joint venture between Hyundai and LG, both South Korean family-run conglomerates known as a chaebol, were detained by federal immigration agents.
The raid, conducted amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, gained international attention and has threatened to dim relations between the two allies. Days following the raid, South Korea and the United States reached an agreement for the workers to be released, with some electing to return home, while others decided to continue working at the plant.
Munoz said the raid was a “big surprise” and came as Hyundai was involved in South Korea’s tariff negotiations with the Trump administration and had committed to invest $26 billion in the United States over the next four years, up from $20.5 billion during the previous 40 years the company had been operating in the country.
He added that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, said he did know what occurred and that it did not fall under the state’s jurisdiction.
“So, apparently, somebody made a phone call and it made it look like there were illegal immigrants,” he said. “That’s absolutely not the case.”
Munoz also said that Trump didn’t want the workers who left the United States to leave. He said that there are jobs that require specialized skills. In the battery business, there are a number of processes and technologies that require workers with abilities lacking in countries, such as the united states, necessitating companies to bring specific workers in from abroad, he said.
“The system — the immigration system — does not recognize that,” he said.
Munoz added that the raid has not affected Hyundai’s commitment to the United States.
“We are not here for the short term,” he said. “We cannot just simply because something happened, which is obviously an accident and then you get even apologies from the president of the United States.”
